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Wolsey Road, OXFORD, OX2 7TA

Another routine shot of a road in a municipal housing estate. It looks like a pleasant place to live and the residents in the main are, I'm sure, perfectly nice law-abiding citizens who like to be good neighbours. Back in the early 1930s though the tenants of the Oxford Corporation were deemed to be so evil that they were physically stopped from entering a nearby private housing estate - for twenty-five years. Note. This image has a detailed ‘shared description’ which you won’t see by viewing this image on a slideshow. To read it click on the image.

These flats featured a large nature themed metal sculpture on the end wall, just about visible in my photo. My fiancee, who is a naturalist, was able to identify most of the creatures and plants represented in it ... "oh look, there's a marsh fritillary, and an orchid." Anyway, this was shot from the open window of a moving car as we queued in the Sunday traffic on the A40 around Oxford. I was bored!

The white-painted house is 32 Carlton Road. Its neighbour on the other side of the lamp-post is 61 Wolsey Road. They don't look a great deal different and the accommodation they provide is probably broadly similar, three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and one or two reception rooms. They are even about the same age having been built in 1933 or 34. However the then occupiers of the redbrick house were deemed to be such a threat to the wellbeing of the occupiers of the white house that a wall was built across the road between the two to keep them separate. This curious example of segregation in the United Kingdom survived more or less intact for the entire period from 1934 until 1959 (a car did crash into it in 1936 but the wall was quickly repaired). Note. This image has a detailed ‘shared description’ which you won’t see by viewing this image on a slideshow. To read it click on the image.

Why bother with this? Streetview do it just as well. In most cases I wouldn't have. However, there is a reason and it's to do with class distinctions. The white house on the left is 59 Carlton Road. Its neighbour on the right is 94 Wolsey Road. Carlton Road was developed by a private company; Wolsey Road by the City of Oxford. The street names are different because the private company didn't want the reputation of its estate sullied by association with the council estate. The developers felt so strongly about this that they built a wall between the two houses extending across the road towards the viewpoint. Hard to credit but it stayed there for the great majority of the time between late 1934 and 9th March 1959. To find out why read on. Note. This image has a detailed ‘shared description’ which you won’t see by viewing this image on a slideshow. To read it click on the image.

Pedestrian and cycle bridge over the A40 Northern Bypass at Cutteslowe, Oxford

Carlton Road is a typical 1930s private housing development no different from many others. It looks much like this one http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1985413 However its occupiers were deemed to be under threat from the folk living in the neighbouring estate to the extent that a wall had to be put up to keep them out. Why? Because the occupiers of the latter estate were council tenants. Note. This image has a detailed ‘shared description’ which you won’t see by viewing this image on a slideshow. To read it click on the image.

Generally, to get a blue plaque affixed to a house, the subject has to be (a) a person, (b) famous and (c) dead. In this case the main protagonists are people and aren't particularly famous although they are almost certainly dead; they certainly don't warrant a blue plaque. It is what they got up to that does. Read on to find out why. Note. This image has a detailed ‘shared description’ which you won’t see by viewing this image on a slideshow. To read it click on the image.